The drone of the petite voice is unfamiliar and he turns to face it.

The ghostly woman is fretful and weary, fiddling with a red-beaded necklace that encircles her wiry throat twice, her wispy spider-leg thin fingers ghoulish pale and jittery. Her lengthy black hair trickles down from a middle part and shines with an oiliness and musky tang his keen nose can corral, dripping over her shoulders like a silken blanket of shadows. His narrow eyes, sun-blinded, browse the bright jewelry for a missing piece, but he can’t tell for certain if it’s a link to the one he’d found earlier on Ashley.

Yes, he answers in the shape of a puzzle piece, hoping that what she will say next fits into his daydreams; everything he needs to know, a lead, a finger pointing in the right direction of a case swiftly dying, collapsing into cold.

She came to…